"Fabien Robbe and myself have been involved in several projects together since 2015, but this is our formal debut as a duo.

It began as good, clean fun. Fabien piled up gear in his van and drove all the way from Brittany to my blessed shack in the suburbs of Paris, by then home of Improvising Beings. We assembled a monster electronic studio for a few days. I will now list the instruments to get rid of that matter: ARP 2600, ARP Sequencer, EMS Synthi E, Farfisa VIP 233, Kurzweil K-2500, Korg MS 10, Korg Wavestation, Solina String Ensemble, Waldorf Microwave XT. I spare you the list of eurorack modules, effects and controllers.

Instinctively, we arranged it in an ecosystem where any instrument would respond to impulses from other instruments, rather than an orchestral color palette of varied sounds, making it difficult to recognize who did what, making sure interaction would be unavoidable. Bar a few leads distinctly Fabien's, the playing was symbiotic.

To maintain a sense of order, we decided early on that we would anchor the project around melodic and rhytmic elements, not necessarily of the experimental kind. We also drew from the two concepts of the drone we are familiar with: Fabien's use thereof in traditional folk music, and my studies of, notably, Eliane Radigue's methods. Well, we poured everything we knew in this album, including a bit of aggressive free improv. Don't worry, it's tucked away somewhere you don't expect it, it'll be gone before you realize. We didn't want to be hampered by any consideration such as 'where are we going'. This is pretty much our 'Sgt. Peppers', we joked. For me, it's a first. I've been around challenging sounds more often than not. Fabien encouraged me to somewhat... entertain you, for a change.

Those who have followed us know we are not the urban type. We have in common that a stroll in the forest or field nearby will fire our creativity, a stream, a light, and to be fully aware of it. Call us 'woke' or trite, we care about ecology, as a science, as a philosophy, as a branch of politics. We are artists and do not purport to show ready-made solutions to the crisis we are going through. Especially not with sounds that are sometimes abstract. But they are abstract with a quality that we like to see as organic, chlorophyllic, or rocky. Matter, material. And, according to the symbiotic, 'ecosystematic' way we created this music (good word, can we apply for a grant with it?), we felt we actually had tackled our subject. The fumbling of the human mind at the onset of a great catastrophe, mourning the impending collapse of nature. Hands feeling for the latch of the exit door - but there's no exit door anymore.

Our choice of synthesizers is of course an added dimension to this line of thought, due to their inherent relationship to electricity, the nature of waveforms, the laws of physics. The mathematics of sound bring us closer to, - ARE the mathematics of the universe. Again, this is no new age vision - the album is clearly about the garbage we leave behind after a picnic in the park.

I've already said too much. Please let your mind wander around these bare concepts, it will do the job. Oh and don't forget to shake your body when you feel like the music invites you to do so. Dance at the scene of the wildfires." --J.Palomo, July 2021

released July 10, 2021 as free download and limited edition cassette.

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews